Printers And Indigenous Populations: Differences Under Political Commotion

Juliane Smith

Professor Adam Warren

HSTLAC 282

28 July 2023

Printers and Indigenous Populations: Differences Under Political Commotion Mexico’s long nineteenth century was a period haunted by political instability and turmoil that had particular repercussions on two populations: printers and indigenous people. When the printing press spread across the country, printers played a pivotal role in distributing revolutionary ideas, political discussions, and more, which helped shape public opinion. On the other hand, indigenous populations shared a distinct, autonomous position in Mexico. They were significantly oppressed and marginalized at the hands of ruling classes that changed with sporadic political transformations. Although both indigenous

Print, rather than only a machine for public ideas and political discourses, was largely intertwined with discussions over authority and definitions of freedoms and rights during periods of revolution and liberal rule. The public highly regarded these prints given the level of education of the printers established by previous rulers hoping to use prints to shape public opinion. These rulers specifically “funded new intellectual pursuits in the Americas, like scientific expeditions and the founding of court-sponsored educational institutions devoted to utilitarian and artistic pursuits in Mexico City,” according to Corinna Zeltsman in her book, Ink Under Their Fingernails. With their higher level of education, printers enjoyed a more privileged position in society compared to indigenous populations, who did not share the same level of education during liberal periods. Furthermore, many printers were sworn to loyalty to royal officials which allowed them to exercise more inclusion within the political atmosphere compared to indigenous communities. Printers like Valdes “embraced a politics structured around loyalty in part because they depended on good relationships with royal officials as precondition of doing business,” and therefore this loyalty served as a “meaningful political

As mentioned before, liberal periods often threatened the right for indigenous communities to be autonomous, therefore, in raging political turmoil, such as the civil war, indigenous populations would side with conservatives because of the liberal idea that lands of the Catholic Church should be taken, and therefore affect their own special laws. However, with the liberals’ victory, this civil war failed to bring indigenous populations more freedom and became more oppressed by the system targeting Spanish colonial laws that protected indigenous peoples. Furthermore, modernity became a focus of Mexico, bringing in several scientists who studied positivism and started to dismiss indigenous ideas because of their favor of more European ideas. Racism in Mexico emerged from racial science, and was partially responsible for policies taking lands away from indigenous populations, further impoverishing them in the countryside, a direct result of systemic targeting based on ill-created ideas of race and modernism. Political changes and transformations of ideas within the political sphere like these affected indigenous populations negatively on all fronts, even through land reforms that could have been beneficial, but were ineffectively